Potter Arrives

Lily received no reply. Anxious, she decided to go to the little park and see if Snape was waiting for her in their usual spot again. The moment she opened the door, there he stood, his hand raised in midair, about to knock.

"Severus, you scared me to death! I thought a Troll had carried you off." Lily quickly pulled Snape inside and shut the door, keeping out the wind and snow.

"I'm fine. There was just a little trouble at home, but it's been resolved, so don't worry."

Snape spoke so casually about drowning his father that Lily really thought nothing had happened at home.

"All right, then can we bake cookies together? Petunia and I were going to make some."

"Lily, where did you go?" Petunia had seen Lily disappear halfway through mixing the flour and was just about to leave the kitchen to see what she was doing.

"Petunia, look who's here." Petunia spotted Snape at once.

"Is he here to bake cookies?" She eyed Snape suspiciously. Petunia had every reason to suspect he wanted to brew Potions into dry biscuits.

"Lily invited me to bake cookies with her." Having said that, Snape went straight to the half-mixed flour. As a future Potions Master, he was frighteningly precise with the proportions of all kinds of ingredients, and his technique was superb. The only problem was that the shapes he made were very strange.

Lily and Petunia watched him prepare to bake the long, brown cookies he had made and hardly dared imagine what they would look like when they came out. Lily stopped him, kneaded the dough into a ball, and sliced it all up. Yes, now those were normal cookies. Satisfied, Lily put them all in the oven.

The three sat in the living room to wait for the cookies to bake, but they didn't sit idle. When two Potions geniuses and an overachiever got together, their shared topic of conversation was Potions. Lily proposed adding trace amounts of unicorn mane ash and a cold-extracted distillate of moonlight grass to an improved healing potion to neutralize the corrosive magic left behind by dark curses, preventing wounds from repeatedly festering after healing as they did with the original. Snape pointed out that moonlight grass had to be picked at midnight while still covered in dew; picking it at noon would make the potion's effects violently unstable, and applying it to a deep wound would burn the flesh. She had tried a three-stage temperature-controlled cold extraction method, making the potion's effects thirty percent more stable. Petunia understood and was concerned about safety. "A difference of 0.2 ounces in the dose of unicorn ash will cause the potion to produce mild hallucinations. For home storage, it has to be kept in a ceramic bottle away from light, not in a metal container."

The suggestion struck a chord with Snape, making him feel that Lily's sister wasn't completely ignorant about Potions after all. To him, people who knew nothing were the kind who brewed Potions strictly by the instructions and couldn't improve them on their own. The three soon finished their discussion. Snape wanted to put the improved potion into practice, while Lily and Petunia stayed behind to wait for the cookies. Only after watching Snape leave for the Potions workshop next door did Petunia look up at Lily. "Are you sure you don't like Snape?"

Lily looked at Petunia blankly. All right, now she knew: Lily had no feelings for Snape beyond friendship. "What?"

"Then do you like Potter?"

Lily thought Petunia was being strange. Why did she have to like one of them? "Lily, I've noticed you have a particular affinity for black-haired people. You like sticking to Snape to brew Potions, and Potter likes sticking to you to play Quidditch." Petunia leaned closer to Lily. "Do you have some kind of device on you that attracts black-haired boys?"

"How could that be? It's all a coincidence. Besides, one is my partner, and the other is, uh, well, sort of a friend."

Lily couldn't even say what place James held in her heart. "All right, I misjudged you again."

When it came to her oblivious little sister, Petunia felt she wouldn't get the right answer even if she asked a hundred times. Christmas dinner was lavish and lively. Snape declined to join them because he was entirely absorbed in brewing Potions, so Lily had to save him a meal.

A few days later, another guest came to the house. Snape had just stepped out of the workshop when he came face-to-face with James, who was striding toward him. "Why do you live next door to Lily, you Snivellus? What gives you the right to live there?"

James Potter ran into Snape the moment he arrived. In fact, he had deliberately walked up to him. Why did he dislike this person so much?

"Heh, Potter, why are you here?"

James lifted his chin. "Because Lily invited me to her house."

Lily would invite Potter to her house? As if anyone would believe that. Potter had obviously used some dirty trick to force Lily to agree to let him visit. Snape was convinced he was right, and the two were like gunpowder about to be ignited, ready to explode at a touch.

"Hey, Severus. Hi, James." Lily had no choice but to step between them. Who could understand how she was breaking out in a cold sweat right now? James was displeased that she had said his name after Snivellus's. "Lily, could you greet me again? Just say my name this time."

His meaning couldn't have been clearer: Just look at me and ignore the person beside me.

The tactic worked. Lily knew he wouldn't give up until he got his way. "Hi, James."

She gestured for Snape to come inside with them, but he politely declined. "I don't want to share a room with a stupid Troll. It would make me feel like the air was polluted." He turned and went back to the Potions workshop.

James was about to step forward and have it out with that Snivellus, but unfortunately, Lily didn't give him the chance. She half pulled, half dragged him into the house.

It was James's first time setting foot in Lily's home. He was excited, but also unhappy that Snivellus had beaten him to it. Petunia came down the stairs and saw a black-haired boy—not Snape, but Potter. Her eyelid twitched, and she had a feeling that from today onward, the house would be in an uproar.

Mr Evans recognized him at once as the boy at the station who had said he wanted to visit, Lily's friend. "Hello there. I remember your name is James. You're very welcome here."

"Good day, sir. These are gifts I brought from home. Merry Christmas." That show of social tact alone was enough to make Petunia see Potter in a better light.

"Oh, you even brought gifts. You really shouldn't have gone to the expense." Mr Evans meant it. How could he let his daughter's friend bring gifts when he came to visit? "It's all right, it's all right. Just a small token."

James solemnly placed the gift box in Mr Evans's hands. Lily watched him in amusement, as though he were handing over some family heirloom.

"Go on and have fun. I won't disturb you. Your mother and I are planning to have a look around the market and check on the department store while we're out." Mr Evans put on his fur coat and went out with Mrs. Evans.

"Be careful at home, and don't open the door to strangers, all right?" Before leaving, Mrs. Evans made a point of reminding Petunia, who nodded. She certainly wouldn't let anyone she didn't know inside.

Only the three young people were left in the house. James was like someone having a bout of hyperactivity, touching and looking at things everywhere as though inspecting his own territory. "Lily, what's this?" James asked curiously, pointing at the television.

"That's a television. Don't wizards have them?" This was Petunia's first real glimpse of the difference between wizards and Muggles. Did even Potter, who was from the pro-Muggle camp, not know about electronic devices?

"We really don't have one at home. It's so small inside—how do you get those little people in there?" James crouched in front of the television and curiously tapped the screen. The glass gave a crisp sound, and his finger didn't pass through it.

"There aren't any people trapped inside. The closed-circuit television cable receives radio-frequency signals, and the circuit board separates them into two electrical signals, one for the picture and one for the sound." Lily explained with unusual patience. Petunia was speechless. How was that any different from not explaining at all? She was a thousand percent sure Potter hadn't understood.

"Huh? What electricity? What signals?" As expected, James hadn't understood.

"If you didn't understand, never mind. You only need to know it's a television." Lily's patience had run out.

James soon set his sights on the refrigerator and casually pulled the door open. A blast of biting cold air hit him in the face. "What's this, then? Woo-hoo, that's cold." He shut the refrigerator.

"That's a refrigerator. It's used for freezing things."

"What about this? It can sing too—is it a radio? I know this one. Wizards have radios too."

James patted the radio proudly, pleased with himself for finding an electronic device he recognized.

"I don't see what's so impressive about recognizing one radio." Petunia couldn't understand Potter's strange train of thought. She didn't want to waste time on this pointless series of questions and answers. Lily could entertain her own friend, so Petunia returned to her room to study without a shred of guilt.